[rescue] Perverse Question

[Frank Van Damme]

On Wednesday 11 June 2003 00:05, Joshua D. Boyd wrote:
> > Perfectly possible. I don't know crap about assembly (or even programming
> > :) ), the only thing I said was that x86 cpu's like the pentium mmx and
> > better have instructions made specifically for multimedia.
>
> No, you said:
>
> On Tuesday 10 June 2003 15:01, Joshua D. Boyd wrote:
> >> Also, many MP3 programs use hand optimized intel assembly (or they
> >> used to back when I was doing Mp3s on a 486).  It might be that such
> >> a thing is needed to make the sparcs work well.  Finally, it might be
> >> that Intel has an instruction that helps that sparcs don't.
> >
> > They do, but not an 486 :-)
> >
> > Think mmx...
>
> which to any reasonable person means that you are denying my claims
> about optimization for 486 level machines.

by "intel has an instruction that helps" I supposed you meant "intel has an
instruction that helps for multimedia", not "no matter how smart you are, you
can't make an mp3 decoder go faster on a 486 using assembly instead of C".

You said (2 replies ago):
-  Also, many MP3 programs use hand optimized intel assembly (or they used to
back when I was doing Mp3s on a 486).

--> I don't deny that.

- It might be that such a thing is needed to make the sparcs work well.

--> No idea about sparc, optimisation or instructions whatsoever, so no
commant.

- Finally, it might be that Intel has an instruction that helps that sparcs
don't.

So I reacted: pentium mmx and higher have an instruction that helps: mmx.

> > btw, I find winamp pretty cpu-hungry...
>
> For many years now, Winamp used the reference decoder from that German
> institute, and I expect that they still do.  It is straight C to my
> recall.  I suppose they could have switched decoders again since I last
> heard.  It was now many years ago that WinAmp could actually be called
> fast.

Indeed. Was a mayor pita on my p133. Xmms scores lots better :)

--
Frank Van Damme    http://www.openstandaarden.be
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Je pense, donc je suis breveti."